Bioware is slowly being indoctrinated by EA. It was so slow that they didn't even realize it was happening until it was too late. They knew they were dying but they had no choice. They unleashed the crucible(the ME3 ending) in hopes that gamers would choose the right ending and destroy EA but we latched onto the control ending thinking we were strong enough to change the future. Unfortunately we were playing into EA's hands all along. Bioware has been destroyed and EA will come back stronger than ever.

We're sorry, Bioware. We thought we were doing the right thing. We're so sorry.

EA waits until developers reach a certain level of advancement and then they strike. They know that developers and EA can never coexist so they eventually destroy them from within and go back into hiding waiting for another developer to rise up so they can repeat the cycle.

We should have heeded the warnings of the Protheans(Maxis) but they were in Simlish so we didn't understand.

Maxis tried to create Crucible, really! But they failed, and then they were sold to EA immediately after this. No joke.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxis
"After the immense success of SimCity, Maxis experimented with different genres. However, their new games, including The Crystal Skull and SimCopter, were commercial failures.[citation needed] They also acquired Cinematronics to create a game called Crucible. Heavy losses and lack of direction led Maxis to begin considering acquisition offers."

Fucking Simlish. Has no resemblance to real language structure. If you want to make a gibberish language, please make it look like a language, please. Linguists need the money. They don't do much else.

oh my god another person who's heard of NOX? I literally ask people about it whenever westwood comes up and I have yet to meet a single person who has ever heard of it. (Granted I haven't asked the internet.)

Dancing? It's like shooting your neighbor's dog Patches then walking into the town square and take a huge dump on the memorial flower garden and stick a big neon sign that flashes "Patches!" and a blinking arrow that point to the big pile of crap you just left.

And then only allow those who walk through the poo pile to sniff the flowers... even though you can't get the smell of feces out of your nose because it's smeared all over your shoes.

Zynga is a different breed of EA. Instead of buying the companies, it uses unlicensed areas of existing games and pretty much makes a copy of it and puts it on Facebook as P2W games with heavy advertising.

Nobody knows who dealt the first shot, EA or Activision. The world was in flames. Those who survived had 2 options; be forced into slavery by either of the 2 great houses or die off.

Many of the larger companies believed they were powerful enough to handle the 2 factions alone, they were wrong. Quickly, The Ubisoft Monarchy was raided by EA by their 5th DRM Legion, Capcom fell peacefully soon after. Activision had another plan and decided to swiftly capture the Epic pricipality to attain their advanced Unreal technology to counter EA's bitter Frosbite weapon. Atari was destroyed, Bethesda was destroyed, Rockstar Games was destroyed, Sega was destroyed, they all fell.

There was another option, to fight back. The many indie developers decided to band together and form a confederacy, Leading them was Notch of the Mojang republic. They were fairly successful at fighting the organized armies of EA and Activision, unfortunately they were not prepared for the mercenary Zynga raiders, many developers went down.
The Indie Confederacy was not all alone, they had friends. One of them was Valve who was under the power of King Newell, He knew the Indie's were in dire need of help and so did Valve. With this new alliance brought a new hope, a chance of survival. Many of the old kingdoms knew of the coming of the the great war, fortunately they joined the alliance. There was Will Wright of Maxis who barely escaped the clutches of EA and was banished in his homelands,the legendary Shigeru Miyamoto of Nintendo, and Sid Meier of Firaxis.

It is still unknown who will endure as the great war is still raging on.

Bioware Montreal [Also works on major titles like Mass Effect and Dragon Age]

Bioware Ireland [Customer Service]

and then:

Bioware Victory [Victory Games]

Bioware Mythic [Mythic Entertainment]

Bioware San Francisco [EA2D]

BioWare Sacramento [KlickNation]

At this point "Bioware" doesn't mean much. Games are developed between multiple studios and there are studios named Bioware that have nothing to do with the original studio. It's nothing but a brand. In some people's eyes I'm sure that makes Bioware dead already.

Did EA actually destroy Spore or was it at heart a badly designed overhyped concept that was impossible to implement into a good game? Given a dream budget and Valve Time, was there a chance that spore would have been anything like we were promised?

It is disheartening to see people who believe that they are not part of the problem. This insistence on creating content on a yearly basis is a product of people rewarding this kind of behavior.

For instance, look at Activision, arguably the pinnacle of this sort of behavior:
* Guitar Hero: tons of sequels/"themed" games made, series became quickly diluted, ruined.
* Call of Duty: after the major success of CoD4, games have been produced yearly at disgustingly low quality (at least on the part of Infinity Ward/Sledgehammer/Raven/who cares). With the introduction of CoD Elite/numerous "content" packs, Activision will drive this series into the dust in the next 2-3 game cycles.

We, as consumers, are just as much to blame for this problem as anyone else. Is it a terrible business practice? Yes, yes it is. However, we continue to reward publishers like EA and Activision for doing it. How many people "boycotted" MW2 or MW3, only to pick up the game within a week of it coming out? How many of us constantly poke and prod different developers, constantly asking them for updates and screenshots of games that they're working on?

We have this insatiable need for content, and the publishers see it. If we are willing to pay for content, they will provide it. It started with DLC, and it's starting with full games.

The solution? Don't buy the games. Don't pirate them, either. The whole point of boycotting something is that you are intentionally not enjoying/partaking in something in order to make a point. Pirating a game instead of buying it because you hate the business practices only furthers the need for increased prices on games, and more terrible business practices.

EA is an apex predator of the videogame world. They go and consume lesser creatures until the creature is dead. Then the remains go on to form new life.

what you cannot see in this comic is the good programmers and designers as worms crawling forth from the fetid corpses and slowly uniting under a new banner as a new company. Which then grows and creates a new game, so that the attention of EA is gathered again and it comes to consume the reborn.

"We feel, though, that the middle road, what Cliff Bleszinski says is the “dead” middle class of gaming, is where we are and have always been – cerebral games for smart gamers – and that is where the PC shines. We can make whatever we want, without restrictions."

Version 0.0.1 of the open source clone just came out a couple of days ago: http://code.google.com/p/corsix-th/ . Some stuff isn't implemented yet, but it works on current systems and resolutions, it's pretty great.